Met Is Given 13 Works Worth Over $60 Million

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: May 20, 1996

Thirteen works of 20th-century art by masters like Picasso, Modigliani, Braque and Leger -- a collection experts believe to be worth $60 million to $80 million -- have been given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Klaus G. Perls and his wife, Amelia.

The Perlses have been Manhattan dealers in 20th-century art for more than 60 years. Besides trading works internationally, the couple have also been avid collectors and their gift to the Metropolitan is from their private holdings.

William S. Lieberman, the Metropolitan's chairman of 20th-century art, said he hoped to rehang portions of the museum's 20th-century art collection to accommodate the pieces within three weeks.

Mr. and Mrs. Perls closed their gallery at 1016 Madison Avenue last fall and have been selling the art both from their gallery and from their personal collection in auctions at Sotheby's.

"I chose to give the Met those things that are closest to my heart because I wanted to be able to go on seeing them," Mr. Perls, who is 84, said in a recent telephone interview.

Their gift, among the largest ever given to the Metropolitan's department of 20th-century art, will fill some important holes in its permanent collection, most notably in the area of Cubist paintings.

"Cubism has been one of our great gaps," said Philippe de Montebello, the Metropolitan's director. "Now we have three masterpieces." Two are from 1910, Picasso's "Woman in an Armchair" and Braque's oval "Still Life With a Candlestick and Playing Cards," and the third is Picasso's "Still Life with Pipes" from 1912.

Three Picassos in the gift, including "Woman in an Armchair," were lent to the Metropolitan's "Picasso and Weeping Women" show two years ago. The other two are "Sleeping Nude With Flowers," a colorful 1932 painting in which the lavender-tinted body of Picasso's mistress Marie-Therese Walter is surrounded by flowers, and the somber "Girl Asleep at a Table," a 1936 night scene in grays and blacks showing the interior of an attic room lighted by a suspended bulb, a device repeated the next year in the famous mural "Guernica."

"When I started out these works were considered very modern," Mr. Perls said. "In the 1930's you couldn't sell them because people thought they were too avant-garde. But I believe these are among the best paintings Picasso ever did."

The Perlses also gave the museum a painting and a sculpture by Modigliani. "Reclining Nude," a 1918 painting, is one of only about a dozen nudes the artist produced. "This is possibly the best of them," Mr. de Montebello said. "Until now we had no Modigliani nudes." In addition, "Head of a Woman," a two-foot-high limestone bust from 1912, is the first Modigliani sculpture in the Metropolitan's collection.

This is not the Perlses' first gift to the Met. In 1991 they gave 153 pieces of African royal art from Benin, which are in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. Those included bronze figures, elephant tusks carved with royal figures, musical instruments, decorative masks and jewelry.

Mr. Perls said the fact that the Metropolitan's 20th-century collection needed just the sorts of works he and his wife had was the main reason they choose the Met rather than a more obvious alternative like the Museum of Modern Art.

"The Modern already has a fantastic collection, but you see it separately, not as a continuation of art from all periods in art history, as you do at the Met," Mr. Perls said.

Unlike many donors who stipulate that their gifts be hung together, the Perlses have asked that the art be incorporated into the Met's permanent collection. "I don't like the idea of museums being forced to hang things a certain way. I think it's pretentious," Mr. Perls said. "The Met has a fine collection already and if these pieces help and in some way upgrade it, that's all I want."

Photos: "Sleeping Nude With Flowers," Picasso's 1932 portrait of amistress. (Photographs by Lynton Gardiner/Metropolitan Museum of Art); "Head of a Woman," the Met's first Modigliani statue.